It was my most loved game, and now, is rapidly becoming my most hated game.
Why game developers have this urge to beat casual gamers down with a big stick, I'll never know. If I want to play it on ******* hard, I would have selected ******* hard.

You can do it, even if losses can become frustrating at the Eastern Front.
I would go on with 200% Prestige. That should be enough to deal with losses. That and adapting to the odds being shifted in favor of the Russians.

I mean don't run in circles in your room ranting about the devs, I guess you know history and know who did something similar with his general staff!

I hope you consider applying for the Beta testing of Soviet Corps. The dev team would do very well to include you, I also feel the late war DLCs got quite hard. But well, I guess I have to take part of the blame. Didn't help testing 43/44 much and maybe should have protested against the increasing difficulty more. But that was quite wanted, the dangerous problem IMO was that many testers became extremely good and those who struggled didn't speak up enough, in hindsight.

Seriously, take a trip to Bayreuth, listen to Wagner and then take on those milksops on the Western Front in the West Front DLCs maybe. Unlke you these NPCs never experienced the Eastern Front!

Problem is beta testers test same maps over and over again and learn to know enemy formations and AI scripts making it a lot easier. And if someone struggles doesn't have maybe guts to admit it. GC east 39-42 is very well done but after that just Especially in extra long campaigns best part is keeping your experienced units throughout the journey and watch how they develop but after year 42 you have to rely on green (all tiger) force because of constant heavy losses.

Naxor, I clearly disagree. I have gone through the whole 43 dlc once (only the first 3 easy to medium difficulty scenarios more than once) without prior knowledge of the maps. And although I settled for Minor Victories in Yakovlevo and Oboyan, I lost exactly ONE core unit in the course of the dlc, still starting 44 with about 36.000 prestige and a mixed core ("only" 7 Tigers and 3 Fw 190 for example).

Playthrough was on General, which means no advantages and no disadvantages for the player. If the lessons learned in 39 to 42 are applied, the game is still a joy. If however one simply wants to blitz through every scenario without thinking - thats what the easy levels and the cheatcodes are for.

I fail to understand what Muddy wants. He has all the tools available to make the game a babies dream.

Simples ThorHa, I had the game at the perfect difficulty, the sort difficulty that allowed me to really enjoy the game. All was fine and dandy up until GC42, then it was as if they changed the rules and flipped the difficulty on it's arse.
The difficulty should stay something like constant throughout the game. It has changed from do-able to ridiculous. Now I am having to fad about trying to find some sort of level that will once again allow me to enjoy the game rather than make me want to throw it in the bin.

The difficulty I had it on up until 42 was not that easy. I had to be very careful, and I did lose units, but on GC42 terrain seems to give no advantage, hell, I have seen Russian units drive straight across rivers like they were race tracks. The weakest Russian unit can take chunks out of my elite units and I can lose up to 4 per turn, even though they should have had the advantage. Russian planes fly straight past my defensive line of fighters and AA and they always know where you weakest/damaged units are, even though they should have no LOS.

3 simple statements:
The AI plays by the same sight rules like you, otherwise my hundreds of successful air traps would not have worked.
The AI can not race ober rivers faster than you can, only that the T34 has one more movement than German tanks except Panthers.
The AI can not regularly (!) bite big chunks out of elite units, although it can happen with random RNG. More likely they bite these chunks out of infantry in the open against T34/41.

Hello Muddy, it is true that the difficulty gets higher during GC'42, and even more during GC'43, when your core is supposed to shrink a bit. Apparently a lot of beta testers found the going to be (too) easy and the 'baseline' difficulty was bumped up. And than later a lot of people with supercores found the later years in the game getting boring even on very high difficulty settings, so the 'soft cap' was added as well, which has a big effect on those years. A bit too much for me personally, I think.

I am curious though, what difficulty are you playing at now? Maybe some tweaks to set a custom difficulty can take the sting out of some scenarios for you. I'm not the best of players myself, and I usually have to dial back the difficulty in the later years.

The Soviets units that are racing across rivers, could it be that the rivers froze in between turns? The AI gets the first turn during some scenarios so any weather changes are at the start of the AI turn, which has given me many surprises of the 'why are my units suddenly being attacked from the air even though it was snowing during my turn?' variety. Fun times.

ThvN wrote:
I am curious though, what difficulty are you playing at now? Maybe some tweaks to set a custom difficulty can take the sting out of some scenarios for you. I'm not the best of players myself, and I usually have to dial back the difficulty in the later years.

The Soviets units that are racing across rivers, could it be that the rivers froze in between turns? The AI gets the first turn during some scenarios so any weather changes are at the start of the AI turn, which has given me many surprises of the 'why are my units suddenly being attacked from the air even though it was snowing during my turn?' variety. Fun times.

Ah, Thank you. That explains what those two strange happenings were all about.

The level I was playing until GC42
General with custom options AI-2, Rules=1. 20, Combat random-Dice chess, Reform units-checked.
I have since lowered it to Colonel with the same custom options.

@BiteNibbleChomp; Yeah, when I return to the game I am seriously thinking about swallowing my pride and dropping the difficulty down to rock bottom. Anything really, if it means I can get back into my beloved Panzer Corps.

Played GC 42 last 2 weeks before. It is true that the increased number of good soviet armour enforces player discipline - strafe with a lone tank too far and this unit is toast. But that is something you should already have learned during GC 39 to 41. Always, always, always move in dense packages, lead by armour, covered by arty, AA and air. Near the front only move infantry outside closed terrain if you can make sure it is not attacked by enemy armour next turn, never move it if it can be attacked by multiple armour next turn. Etc, etc.

All becomes quite easy except some scenarios in 43 if you simply follow these rules. It gets even easier observing certain AI behaviour. For example - you land an infantry in front of a city and attack after arty preparation. The enemy infantry gets damaged, yours gets damaged. There is enemy armour in the vicinity of the city that could attack your infantry, but only when the enemy Infantry leaves the city hex to make room for the armour. Which is never going to happen in such a scenario, where parts of a battle group are visible for this infantry. Etc, etc.

GC 42 is a moderate ramp up in difficulty, as there are more and better enemy units (regulars, SMG and engineers instead of conscripts, T34 and KV 1 instead of T 26 and T 60), no more, no less.

As PC follows the odd PG approach that no enemy unit is visible during deployment, there is one "cheat" that I use regularly - deploy, do the first turn, use all air to scout the first front lines, restart and adjust deployment. In real WWII there was no such thing as a blind deployment and attack - the commanders always had a rough idea at least about their first to be expected resistance and its deployment.

That PC simply repeated this easy to correct mistake is one of the mysteries of this successor .

This is a half baked solution for no apparent problem. For the uber players there is Rommel and Manstein. For all others there are 6 different difficulty levels, futürzher adjustable by advanced settings (the latter PC only, not ipad). In such an environment there is no need for a soft cap, if some players want more masochism, they can work with house rules.

It's not just PC, an awful lot of games now being made, have no easy or true casual mode. The screams of those wanting competitive game play, complaining that it's too easy has driven the levels up to stupid.
When I first started playing computer games many moons ago, people like to enjoy themselves when playing games, and levels of difficulty were sane. And then came along a new breed that inks and pierces themselves, that require games that spank them hard with a spiked cricket bat.

It's going off-topic but in MMOs (MMORPGs rather) it was quite the other way round, by now it's all extremely easy.

No worries, Soviet Corps will probably settle at Allied Corps /Afrika Corps difficulty. The post 42 DLCs were meant to be more demanding, but I think the East Front DLCs got out of control.
Consider a West Front vacation after Stalingrad!

This is a half baked solution for no apparent problem. For the uber players there is Rommel and Manstein. For all others there are 6 different difficulty levels, futürzher adjustable by advanced settings (the latter PC only, not ipad). In such an environment there is no need for a soft cap, if some players want more masochism, they can work with house rules.

Regards,
Thorsten

I think it was put in mainly because some people didn't want super cores to be used but the fact is you could always field a 'realistic' core and just choose to not upgrade all your tank the KT's. The game is not designed for that though. While it may be possible for the really good players to do it the majority can't. The average player is going to want to upgrade their units, to have a chance against the hordes, to finish the game. They don't have the time, inclination or ability to play every scenario optimally or watch every prestige point spent or learn every trick in the book required to win under the new rules. they will get frustrated and just give up on the game.

IMO a game like this should be challenging, but winnable, for most people on the default level and I don't think that is so now. I have gone back to using the older rules set because the game was no longer any fun.

If you go back to the 1.14 rules you get rid of the soft cap. You keep the new heroes and units you find though and you can customize the settings. It should let you get back to pretty much the same as they way you use to play.

If you go back to the 1.14 rules you get rid of the soft cap. You keep the new heroes and units you find though and you can customize the settings. It should let you get back to pretty much the same as they way you use to play.

Now that sounds like a plan. If I can just fool about with stuff and get it around the way it was before GC42 I will be very happy.